For most of his career, the challenges of ghetto life and a need for global peace have colored Yami Bolo’s songs. The veteran roots singer has a similar focus for Yami Bolo: Poems And Songs The Cosmo’s Garrison, his first book of poems which was recently released by American company, Xlibris Publishing.
It contains over 400 poems Bolo wrote while composing songs. Having experienced the violence of urban communities, he went for an organic feel to encourage misguided youth from a life of crime.
“Growing up in Kingston 13, I was watching the old thing with politics. The general election in 1980, a lotta (violent) tings happen in my area; wi use to bleach (stay up all night) ‘cause di man dem use to sey, ‘don’t sleep tonight ‘cause wi a come fi yuh’. Things like dat,” he recalled.
Yami Bolo was raised in Greenwich Farm, a rough community in Jamaica’s capital Kingston with strong ties to the People’s National Party which governed the country under a socialist agenda for most of the 1970s. During that period, its supporters were involved in violent confrontations with their counterparts from the conservative Jamaica Labor Party.
After scoring an initial dancehall hit in 1986 with the Winston Riley-produced Gotta Take It Easy, Bolo’s embrace of Rastafari later that decade saw him working with roots-reggae giants including Augustus Pablo and guitarist Earl “Chinna” Smith. In the 1990s, he had big hits with Love My Woman for Sly and Robbie and Put Down Your Weapon (with Capleton) for Colin “Bulby” York and Lynford “Fatta” Marshall.
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